Jamie_Lambo wrote: ↑Fri May 25, 2018 6:50 pm

StroppyChops wrote: ↑Fri May 25, 2018 6:00 pm

Kammekor wrote: ↑Fri May 25, 2018 5:08 pmKhmer is not a tonal language.....

Yeah, people keep saying that, but I disagree - and I have an expensive piece of paper to back it up.

Ask a Khmer friend to pronounce the word អំបិល (ambel) for you - it's salt. Then ask them to pronounce អំពូល (ampoul) for you - it's light globe. Then go for អំពៅ (ampow) - it's sugarcane. There are two or three other variations in this word cluster that I can't recall right now, but I challenge any non-Khmer to hear the word spoken in conversational language, in isolation, no context, and be able to repeatedly and accurately give the right translation. I've seen Khmer from different regions have to provide context on these words for the meaning to be clear. To me, this word cluster is tonal. There are other word clusters that are similar.

I'm not sure where this "not tonal" notion came from, but I suspect it was the American war office which produced language learning tapes during the wars (I can still pick the people who learned American from them) which did a "barely good enough" job in that era, but an utterly screwed job for this era. Incidentally, the Khmer team members sit and chuckle at all the mistakes in Contemporary Cambodian, so if you learned with that resource, don't be too confident of your accuracy.

the difference is you mixing up tones with the lazy pronunciation, if all these words were pronounced correctly how they are written you would hear the different vowels being pronounced, its not the tone in how you say it which changes the word meaning here its the pronunciation of the vowels

Freightdog wrote: ↑Fri May 25, 2018 7:09 pm Can one get away with simply responding 'Baat, men te'? The fits and giggles I cause by repeating (and failing miserably) delay things a lot.

StroppyChops wrote: ↑Fri May 25, 2018 7:04 pm

Jamie_Lambo wrote: ↑Fri May 25, 2018 6:50 pm

StroppyChops wrote: ↑Fri May 25, 2018 6:00 pm

Kammekor wrote: ↑Fri May 25, 2018 5:08 pmKhmer is not a tonal language.....

Yeah, people keep saying that, but I disagree - and I have an expensive piece of paper to back it up.

Ask a Khmer friend to pronounce the word អំបិល (ambel) for you - it's salt. Then ask them to pronounce អំពូល (ampoul) for you - it's light globe. Then go for អំពៅ (ampow) - it's sugarcane. There are two or three other variations in this word cluster that I can't recall right now, but I challenge any non-Khmer to hear the word spoken in conversational language, in isolation, no context, and be able to repeatedly and accurately give the right translation. I've seen Khmer from different regions have to provide context on these words for the meaning to be clear. To me, this word cluster is tonal. There are other word clusters that are similar.

I'm not sure where this "not tonal" notion came from, but I suspect it was the American war office which produced language learning tapes during the wars (I can still pick the people who learned American from them) which did a "barely good enough" job in that era, but an utterly screwed job for this era. Incidentally, the Khmer team members sit and chuckle at all the mistakes in Contemporary Cambodian, so if you learned with that resource, don't be too confident of your accuracy.

the difference is you mixing up tones with the lazy pronunciation, if all these words were pronounced correctly how they are written you would hear the different vowels being pronounced, its not the tone in how you say it which changes the word meaning here its the pronunciation of the vowels

Agreed but are we talking about functional language or text-book language? Language is never static, it's constantly evolving, and the assertion that Khmer isn't tonal was made back in the period I discussed. I've literally spent hours on this word cluster with numerous Khmer and swear that the only thing they're changing in pronunciation is tone. I argue that there are parts of the language that are now tonal and people disagree - which is fine.

Incidentally, can you imagine if Americans and Brits pronounced words correctly as they are written?

Jamie_Lambo wrote: ↑Fri May 25, 2018 7:33 pm

StroppyChops wrote: ↑Fri May 25, 2018 7:04 pm

Jamie_Lambo wrote: ↑Fri May 25, 2018 6:50 pm

StroppyChops wrote: ↑Fri May 25, 2018 6:00 pm

Kammekor wrote: ↑Fri May 25, 2018 5:08 pmKhmer is not a tonal language.....

Yeah, people keep saying that, but I disagree - and I have an expensive piece of paper to back it up.

Ask a Khmer friend to pronounce the word អំបិល (ambel) for you - it's salt. Then ask them to pronounce អំពូល (ampoul) for you - it's light globe. Then go for អំពៅ (ampow) - it's sugarcane. There are two or three other variations in this word cluster that I can't recall right now, but I challenge any non-Khmer to hear the word spoken in conversational language, in isolation, no context, and be able to repeatedly and accurately give the right translation. I've seen Khmer from different regions have to provide context on these words for the meaning to be clear. To me, this word cluster is tonal. There are other word clusters that are similar.

I'm not sure where this "not tonal" notion came from, but I suspect it was the American war office which produced language learning tapes during the wars (I can still pick the people who learned American from them) which did a "barely good enough" job in that era, but an utterly screwed job for this era. Incidentally, the Khmer team members sit and chuckle at all the mistakes in Contemporary Cambodian, so if you learned with that resource, don't be too confident of your accuracy.

the difference is you mixing up tones with the lazy pronunciation, if all these words were pronounced correctly how they are written you would hear the different vowels being pronounced, its not the tone in how you say it which changes the word meaning here its the pronunciation of the vowels

Agreed but are we talking about functional language or text-book language? Language is never static, it's constantly evolving, and the assertion that Khmer isn't tonal was made back in the period I discussed. I've literally spent hours on this word cluster with numerous Khmer and swear that the only thing they're changing in pronunciation is tone. I argue that there are parts of the language that are now tonal and people disagree - which is fine.

Incidentally, can you imagine if Americans and Brits pronounced words correctly as they are written?

true but you wouldnt class English a tonal language just because people pronounce things differently,
in English we have words like Where/Wear/We're/Were which all sound and spelt similar like your words, and you would struggle hearing the difference depending on your location, but changing the tone of how you say them doesnt change the word meaning, the same as for your example, they may sound similar and are spelt similar, but changing the tone wont change the meaning of the word

StroppyChops wrote: ↑Fri May 25, 2018 8:04 pm

Jamie_Lambo wrote: ↑Fri May 25, 2018 7:33 pm

StroppyChops wrote: ↑Fri May 25, 2018 7:04 pm

Jamie_Lambo wrote: ↑Fri May 25, 2018 6:50 pm

StroppyChops wrote: ↑Fri May 25, 2018 6:00 pm

Yeah, people keep saying that, but I disagree - and I have an expensive piece of paper to back it up.

Ask a Khmer friend to pronounce the word អំបិល (ambel) for you - it's salt. Then ask them to pronounce អំពូល (ampoul) for you - it's light globe. Then go for អំពៅ (ampow) - it's sugarcane. There are two or three other variations in this word cluster that I can't recall right now, but I challenge any non-Khmer to hear the word spoken in conversational language, in isolation, no context, and be able to repeatedly and accurately give the right translation. I've seen Khmer from different regions have to provide context on these words for the meaning to be clear. To me, this word cluster is tonal. There are other word clusters that are similar.

I'm not sure where this "not tonal" notion came from, but I suspect it was the American war office which produced language learning tapes during the wars (I can still pick the people who learned American from them) which did a "barely good enough" job in that era, but an utterly screwed job for this era. Incidentally, the Khmer team members sit and chuckle at all the mistakes in Contemporary Cambodian, so if you learned with that resource, don't be too confident of your accuracy.

the difference is you mixing up tones with the lazy pronunciation, if all these words were pronounced correctly how they are written you would hear the different vowels being pronounced, its not the tone in how you say it which changes the word meaning here its the pronunciation of the vowels

Agreed but are we talking about functional language or text-book language? Language is never static, it's constantly evolving, and the assertion that Khmer isn't tonal was made back in the period I discussed. I've literally spent hours on this word cluster with numerous Khmer and swear that the only thing they're changing in pronunciation is tone. I argue that there are parts of the language that are now tonal and people disagree - which is fine.

Incidentally, can you imagine if Americans and Brits pronounced words correctly as they are written?

true but you wouldnt class English a tonal language just because people pronounce things differently,
in English we have words like Where/Wear/We're/Were which all sound and spelt similar like your words, and you would struggle hearing the difference depending on your location, but changing the tone of how you say them doesnt change the word meaning, the same as for your example, they may sound similar and are spelt similar, but changing the tone wont change the meaning of the word

No, you're right (baat, bong!) - English is not at all tonal, and neither is American.

Not sure if there are any homographs or homophones in Khmer, but that's slightly different to what I was discussing. Your grasp of Khmer is light-years ahead of mine and I respect your perspective, I'm just talking about my lived experience.

superferret wrote: ↑Fri May 25, 2018 9:06 pm StroppyChops, the reason you can't hear the difference between these words is probably because you come from an English background. I come from a European language background and I can distinguish these very clearly, since our languages train us to perceive these small differences in vowel sounds. English doesn't. This has nothing to do with tonality, and khmer is not a tonal language, that said every language has a tonal rhythm to it, like statements vs questions, emphasis on parts of words, etc. The problem with Khmer as already mentioned is that spoken formed is a highly different dialect, and especially PP dialect. You can learn to distinguish these wovels, you just need to spend enough time with it. Regarding this, it's interesting that the khmers have a vowel between "o" as in "no" and "a" as in "Walter", since this sound doesn't exist in my language I have difficulty producing it, though I do perceive it.

The other things is spoken khmer has a lot of liberty in changing vowels sounds according to the mood of the speaker. This is a feature not found in Western languages. Like a simple example, you can either say "Loy" or "Looy" for money, to me those are completely different vowels, still khmers interchange them all the time.

StroppyChops wrote: ↑Fri May 25, 2018 9:32 pm

superferret wrote: ↑Fri May 25, 2018 9:06 pm StroppyChops, the reason you can't hear the difference between these words is probably because you come from an English background. I come from a European language background and I can distinguish these very clearly, since our languages train us to perceive these small differences in vowel sounds. English doesn't. This has nothing to do with tonality, and khmer is not a tonal language, that said every language has a tonal rhythm to it, like statements vs questions, emphasis on parts of words, etc. The problem with Khmer as already mentioned is that spoken formed is a highly different dialect, and especially PP dialect. You can learn to distinguish these wovels, you just need to spend enough time with it. Regarding this, it's interesting that the khmers have a vowel between "o" as in "no" and "a" as in "Walter", since this sound doesn't exist in my language I have difficulty producing it, though I do perceive it.

The other things is spoken khmer has a lot of liberty in changing vowels sounds according to the mood of the speaker. This is a feature not found in Western languages. Like a simple example, you can either say "Loy" or "Looy" for money, to me those are completely different vowels, still khmers interchange them all the time.

Agree with most of your post, but not your assumptions on my ability to hear subtle nuance. I have worked in speech remediation, am a Masters-qualified language teacher, and have taught in China - but I understand why you'd make the assumptions you do. Thanks for your comments.

Jamie_Lambo wrote: ↑Fri May 25, 2018 11:52 pm shut up, youre just a hairy looking biker dude who drives around in a tuk tuk!